Basic Education Minister Siviwe Gwarube has announced her intentions to ban the use of pesticides in schools to avoid situations where the school nutrition programme gets implicated in food poisoning incidents.

A SERIOUS PROBLEM

Gwarube's announcement follows the deaths of several children caused by exposure to a chemical called Terbufos, which was linked to the deaths of five children who died after allegedly eating snacks from a local spaza shop in Naledi last month. Gwarube said the deadly chemical has been found in several spaza shops in different townships, therefore she wants to ensure that it does not reach any schools. "I will be gazetting and moving to ban the use of insecticides and pesticides on school premises. As Minister Steenhuisen said, these kinds of pesticides are for industrial and agricultural use. There is no reason for them to be on the premises of our schools," Gwarube said. She added that she has been engaging with other provincial Departments of Education on ways to protect feeding schemes from toxic substances. "The priority is to make sure that the school nutrition programme, which feeds 9.7 million learners every single day, is protected from being compromised because we want to make sure that those who are food handlers and distributors of the school nutrition programme are adhering to very strict guidelines," she added.

STRICT MEASURES

Gwarube added that the education department will also enforce strict regulations for food handlers in school nutrition programmes. "We have done a lot of inspection in terms of NSNP to figure out whether or not that school nutrition has been compromised. And we have found that a lot of the cases where children have died did not emanate from the programme," she said.